defending your rights

The fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizens the right "to be secure in their persons, papers, and houses." Unfortunately, it doesn't confer a right for us to be secure in our electronic transmissions, since those things didn't exist at the time the Bill of Rights was embedded in our law.

"What does it mean" asks the social agitator and journalist Naomi Wolf, "to live in a society in which surveillance is omnipresent?"

It means, she continues, A concerted effort is underway in the US – and in the United Kingdom – to “brand” surveillance as positive. New York City subway passengers are now advised that they might experience random searches of their bags. Activists in America are now accustomed to assuming that their emails are being read and their phone calls monitored. Indeed, the telecom companies Verizon and AT&T have established areas on their premises for eavesdropping activity by the National Security Agency.

The paranoia of a government which conducts blanket surveillance of its citizens is obvious, and it's the reason why a pacifist/anarchist like Scott Crow of Austin, Texas ends up on the FBI's "domestic terrorism" watch list.

Besides monitoring all his phone calls and e-mails, government agencies closely watch Crow's house for any potential acts of terrorism that may be committed by his housemate, his pair of backyard goats, his flock of chickens, his turkey or his vegetables, or possibly enacted through some nefarious use of the solar panels on his roof.

In an article in the May 23, 2011 New Yorker, the award-winning political journalist Jane Mayer details the emergence of a vast new security bureaucracy, in which at least two and a half million people hold confidential, secret, or top-secret clearances; huge expenditures on electronic monitoring, along with a reinterpretation of the law in order to sanction it; and corporate partnerships with the government that have transformed the counterterrorism industry into a powerful lobbying force.

Considering the circumstances in which we now find ourselves, it becomes obvious that the Bill of Rights notwithstanding, the only rights we truly possess are those we're capable of defending.

With this in mind, I've recently cut back my presence on the internet by about 75 percent. I post here once a week and check my e-mails, but I no longer visit Facebook or post on the discussion boards at BeliefNet, since those places, besides being subject to government snooping, are under constant surveillance by armies of advertisers, con men, and scheissters.

At a time like the present, I would encourage fellow-citizens to reconsider the virtues of the United States Postal Service, which is also subject to surveillance, but of a much less comprehensive type due to physical limitations, and to re-visit the habit of letter writing. Also, printed newspapers, published anonymously, may enjoy a renaissance in the near future, since they would provide a much more secure medium for spreading revolutionary information and sentiment than blogs.

One thing is certain: we have a right to privacy, and cannot possibly continue living under the tyranny of a surveillance state, since its existence is incompatible with a free society.

--Cassandro
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